The present invention concerns a method for examining anterior portions of the eye and to apparatus for performing the method.
The anterior portions of the eye comprise the cornea, the anterior chamber and the eye lens, and for their examination the use of slit-lamp devices is customary. Such slit-lamp devices consist essentially of an illumination device producing a slit image, and an observation microscope which is normally a stereomicroscope, known as a corneal microscope. The illuminating device which produces the slit image and the corneal microscope are customarily swingable jointly and individually around a vertical axis of rotation. In order to detect opacity or fine foreign bodies in the anterior media of the eye, the slip lamp is generally adjusted oblique to the direction of observation so that light of the slit beam may be dispersed by inhomogeneities of the eye and so that the latter may then be viewable via the corneal microscope. The eye presents itself to the examiner as if the slit-lamp illuminating device had placed a light section through the anterior media, in the direction of the light beam.